Medieval Total War is out!!!!!

[General Ludd]

It's a good game, my only complaint is that the campaigns are too rigid. But there is alot of them... I've only been playing the stand early period campaign so far.

[Footie Mad]

Download the demo if you dont have the game, its big and you get to really try the game. Convinced me to buy anyway.

[DrSpike]

Should arrive tomorow.........was hoping for Saturday........but no luck.

[Grumbold]

Been "straining my brain" with this all weekend. Definitely great fun although I think in time the appeal will wear off because of the few niggling limitations:

- There is a serious lack of diplomatic options. You can't even ask allies to declare war on one of your enemies. All they do is drop one ally if two go to war with each other. Stopping a juggernaut nation becomes almost impossible as a result. All the other AI nations continue squabbling as they get eaten one by one.

In my present game I'm struggling to turn Poland into an effective nation without ever fighting another Catholic state (well anyone except rebels and Novgorod basically, because they're all bigger and better armed than me.) Meanwhile the Turks have eaten Byzantium (except Caffa and Rhodes), Hungary, Italy and Egypt. Instead of opposing this deadly threat Spain, Aragon, France, England, Germany and Denmark have just fought each other into the ground. The Papal threats of excommunication don't seem to have had any impact.

- The AI emissaries etc seems to be able to make a beeline for your king no matter where he is, but you have to hunt theirs down by moving your pieces around every turn (with no prompt about which have moved and which have not). This gets tiresome, especially in a developed game where you can have dozens of each type of special.

Other micromanagement tedium involves checking the loyalty % of your provinces every turn. Ones you have owned for a long time are normally safe unless you get a famine but once foreign agents start running around its only prudent to check every single one. The quick colour check doesn't tell you which ones can have their taxes safely hiked. A governor AI to do that would be very straightforward and useful.

- Arrows run out very fast - I'd be interested in a configuration option to improve this a bit without making it unlimited.

Enough of the nit-picking. Fantastic fun so far and I'm looking forward to my first attempt to storm a castle. So far I've been content to starve out the fortifications. The number of troop types is surprisingly large and I suspect that will be the meat of any good strategy guide. What beats what and why, which are the best bang for the buck etc. The English longbow and billmen are certainly battle winners in the early game if they can afford to develop the provinces. The Polish retainer cavalry are very strong too - you just need to capture half a dozen provinces before you can afford to field any.

[child of Thor]

Excellent news! One (mainstream)company at least still producing great strat-games.I'm going shopping

[Leonidas]

I played the demo - it was fun

I would imagine that some, if not most, of the niggling problems should be fixed with a couple of patches. . .

[zulu9812]

Smeg. Smeg Smeg Smeg Smeg Smeg.

The game crashes at various intervals in strategy mode - usually at the end of a turn. It happens with varying factions at various times. I've looked at some Total War forums, and it seems to be quite a common program. Activision Support even have a section dedicated to it. Unfortunately, their 'solutions' are merely bog-standard 'oh it's your video card' answers, i.e. change resolution to 800x600, don't have progs running in background (like, Duh), etc. So they don't actually know what they problem is, because if they did there's be one clear solution. As it stands, the game is literally unplayable. It hasn't happened to all users, so you could argue that it's a problem with my computer. I think it's more likely that it's a problem with the game, albeit one that only shows up on some computers. And I have a nasty feeling that Activision will not be able to solve my problem and that the game will remain unplayable until a patch comes out. Whenever that is

What I can't understand is how this managed to slip through the net. It's a fairly major problem, and it's happened to a lot of people. When a company releases game unplayable to many, it is clearly an example of unfinished code. And ppl accused Civ3 of being a beta

[Grumbold]

I expect the problem will turn out to be configurations that are not completely DirectX 8.1 compatible. Easy for me to say, of course, because I'm totally unaffected.

[Cookie Monster]

Well after being away for a while I'm back.

Hello everyone, good to see that there is more talk of this wonderful game. Although, like any computer game, how long will the novelty last?

Anyway, to date I haven't experienced any crashes. Not in the strategic mode nor in the battle mode. I have been playing MTW now for an estimated 30 hours. In my current game I have selected a minor faction (modified a text file to get the Novogorod faction in the early campaign game) and have built myself a pretty good empire. Most of the modern day Russian Federation is under my control. Georgia and Crimea are all that's left to take.

I've realised that the more the game develops the more micromanaging is necessary. It can be quite trying at times. Between managing all of your agents and provinces you barely have time to remember to rebuild/re-equipe units. The other point of frustration for me at least, is the inundation of enemy priests and alims in your lands. I can barely assasinate them when another deluge hits my lands again.

I have to agree with Grumbold about diplomacy as well. Too many times I find myself wishing that someone would help me in my wars against other strong factions. Where's the F4 key ala Civ3 when you need it?

[Grumbold]

My Poland game is reaching culmination. Greater Poland now extends from Finland to the Black Sea. My attempts to strike at the Turk were delayed by a war with England that nearly bankrupted me because we both had huge sea trading networks so I had to eliminate almost every single one of his fleets to return to my customary level of income. England refused to accept a ceasefire even after I had total sea dominance and its European empire collapsed, allowing France to reappear and Spain to recover.

Then the Mongols invaded. Fortunately they picked Kazir where my main field army was poised to strike Georgia. The Khan was sent home in a box but it took time and troops to clear out his impressive invasion force for good.

Finally in 1260 the inevitable Polish-Turk war began. I've now "liberated" Hungary and the Balkans, driving a substantial wedge between the western and eastern Turkish forces. The Turkish galleys were no match for my caravels. Our first strike into Asia Minor was thrown back, but having inflicted over 2000 casualties for the loss of 700 the General pronounced himself satisfied that the way is now open for a decisive push.

One thing I am finding, much to my irritation, is that there seem to be invisible restrictions on what you can build in a province. Of all my empire only Pommerania seems to be able to build a cathedral. Nowhere will allow me to build a Chapter House despite being a faithful Catholic, although it will allow me to build royal estates etc so its not confused me for an Orthodox. Once I've defeated the Turks I'll declare this game a victory (I don't see the point in taking over the entire world) then try again as a different nation and see if the allowable builds change for the same provinces.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Nowhere will allow me to build a Chapter House despite being a faithful Catholic....

The Poles and the Danes cannot build Chapter Houses (and thus, cannot build Crusades) despite being Catholic. It's in the readme file. Not sure what the Cathedral problem is.........

Also, I noticed in a previous post you were trying to hunt down the other factions' kings. If you're attempting diplomacy, you can just drop the emissary/princess on one of the other faction's emissaries and that will do the trick - no need to hunt down the king.

[Steve Clark]

M:TW is where I've been at in the past week (playing on my new custom PC that I spent a good part of August building). Since I obviously focus more on the campaign map part and play the battles on occassion, I am glad that CA spent some time to significantly increase the depth and replayability of the campaign map. It's amazing to feel my anticipation and interest in Civ3:PtW reaching to about zero.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by Steve Clark
It's amazing to feel my anticipation and interest in Civ3:PtW reaching to about zero.

You're not alone dude! I've been playing so much MTW that I've lost all interest in even participating in the Civ3 forums.

[John-SJ]

I haven't played Civ3 or participated in the forum since shortly after its release. Civ3 was DOA IMHO.

OTOH, (no, I'm not trying to use every acronym I've memorized) I've been playing MTW a LOT since it's release. Like Steve, (waves at Steve) I play the campaign map heavily and make a foray into tactical battles now and then.

One side effect of playing a lot of MTW though is that it has sparked a new interest in Europa Universalis (I have EU2) (and no, I am not attempting to break the parenthetical comment record either) so I've started playing that when I'm not playing MTW, and for the first time I'm really enjoying the EU experience. And since it mirrors the period of MTW I'm even considering Crusader Kings when it comes out.

John-SJ

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Haupt. Dietrich
I've been playing so much MTW that I've lost all interest in even participating in the Civ3 forums.

Me too. I just check in here once a day (while I'm at work, so no time lost from MTW) to see if there are any new screens or anything for PTW, but I don't feel any sort of anticipation.

I've had MTW since the day it was released in the States (8/21) and I'm only about half way through my second campaign. That means one and a half factions down, 9 and a half to go for the Early period. Then again, I enjoy the tactical battles so I've been playing all of them as they occur, so that makes the games go slower. Not a bad thing! But the amount of time I spend on the strategy map is easily 10x that I spent on it in Shogun. What an improvement! This game looks to have some really good longevity.

[Cookie Monster]

John-SJ:

Yeah EU is a great game (haven't played EU2) Haven't played in a while and probably not anytime soon. I'm in the middle of a big campaign in MTW as the people of Novogorod. I edited the text file to activate this minor faction.

Stuie:

You hit the nail right on top of the head

I seem to spend a great deal more time on the strategic map than I ever did in Shogun. I recently played Shogun for about 5 minutes and realized that I missed MTW a lot. Moving spies, assassins, princesses, etc. is enough to keep you very busy. Checking each and every governors loyalty and vices and virtues sucks up another big chunk of time. I've been meaning to activate an account on the total war forums but like I said, my time is limited and I use nearly all of my free time on MTW. (wife permitting that is! )

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Stuie
Now he's got the "Good runner" vice on top of some others. So I had him assassinated. Hahaha. Nothing like sending an assassin after your own generals! What a hoot.

[Steve Clark]

Good to see you again, John. I promise not to start up any debates on EU.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Stuie
The Poles and the Danes cannot build Chapter Houses (and thus, cannot build Crusades) despite being Catholic. It's in the readme file. Not sure what the Cathedral problem is.........

Also, I noticed in a previous post you were trying to hunt down the other factions' kings. If you're attempting diplomacy, you can just drop the emissary/princess on one of the other faction's emissaries and that will do the trick - no need to hunt down the king.

Thanks! I think its odd that they made that decision about the Danes and Poles. Since the natural Polish expansion path contain the historical territory of the Teutonic Knights it seems fickle to me. Once mere survival is no longer your only concern, pleasing the Pope seems a sensible objective to me even if your country never reached that stage historically. C'est la vie.

[Leonidas]

Are the AI opponents as sneaky and as untrustworthy in Medieval, as they are in Shogun?

I'm currently playing a game of Shogun Total War: Warlords Edition, and my long-time ally just stabbed me in the back.

That clan was a trusted ally, actually sending troops to help me in my quest for domination of Japan.

Alas, it was merely a ploy: once I was over-extended, the Hojo clan attacked me without mercy. As it now stands, I will have my hands full to make a come back.

The game has a "chess-like" feel to it; and the AI is quite cunning.

My overall advice for those playing Shogun is: don't trust the computer AI clans. They are lying scum. Kill them all. . .

[Grumbold]

The AI is totally untrustworthy. Unfortunately I don't find it intelligent. Once it finds a short term reason to attack you it seems incapable of working out what to do next if you block its move or kick its butt. When a human player would be eager for a truce it will sulk and refuse to budge.

This is especially true with the Catholic countries, who seem almost single minded in their determination to squabble with each other (pretty historical and many of the objective VP's encourage this). The Pope will threaten to excommunitate whoever is on foreign soil irrespective of who started the war, so the AI just sits but refuses to make peace. This would not be too irritating except that all trade is automatically blocaded where hostile powers share sea space even if its one vessel and you have a dozen, but you can't drive off the enemy ships without angering the Pope yourself. Ludicrous! I'm hoping a patch will do something to resolve this, but the only true solution may be to install Crusader Kings instead

[child of Thor]

Well i got it last week and have only had time for one 6hr session so far!
Played as Denmark and apart from having weird heirs(one is insane and the other has five toes!no joke!), which doesn't bode well for the future - it seems quite tricky to expand much without angering the Pope and having a crusade declared against you.
Still the atmosphere is excellent and the various additions over shogun that add that little bit more depth(vices+virtues etc) make this a great game. With EU2 as well my medieval education is improving! Things are looking up for the strat gamer.

[August Borms]

It's a good game although the replayability is rather limited compared to EU II.

Two things that should have been in:
Better diplomatic options and a hotseat mode.

[child of Thor]

Yeah i agree on the Longevity thing(at least from initial impressions), i'm sort of hoping they will include more faction to play as too!